Baseball has no defense for pair of losses to LaSalle

LaSalle came from behind and capitalized on 10 Quakers errors in a 14-5 victory after beating Penn 4-3 on Tuesday. Frustration has set in. The Penn baseball team dropped a pair of games to La Salle over the past two days, falling 4-3 on Tuesday before falling 14-5 to the Explorers yesterday. The Quakers (5-19) have now lost nine in a row -- with five of those defeats coming by two runs or less. In both games, Penn excelled in one area of play only to have a terrible showing in another equally important aspect of their game. Case in point: Tuesday afternoon, Penn junior Sean McDonald pitched seven strong innings, giving up no earned runs and striking out six. The righthander's bid for his second win of '99 was denied, however, by three Quakers errors and a Penn offense that stranded 12 runners on base. "That's the bottom line -- the last three games, we've left a lot of runners on [base]. We're just not hitting in the clutch," Quakers coach Bob Seddon said on Tuesday. Case in point, episode two: yesterday afternoon, Penn jumped out to a 4-1 lead over the Explorers; the Quakers finished with 12 hits. The offense's bid to carry the team to victory was cut short, though, by an unprecedented 10 errors by the Penn infield. "The bottom line is the team can't play defense," Seddon offered up yesterday. "We out-hit that team 12-to-11 and we lost. You can have the greatest pitchers in the world, but if you can't field the ball?" In Tuesday's home game, the Quakers looked primed to go up early but a two-out force play left the bases loaded in the first. With Penn trailing 3-0 in the third, though, senior Russ Farscht was able to deliver, driving in Jim Mullen and Glen Ambrosius with a two-out single to right to make it 3-2. Aside from a sacrifice fly by Will Clark in the eighth, Farscht's hit stood as Penn's lone success with runners in scoring position. "We talked about that at the end of the game," said Farscht, who leads the team with 16 RBIs. "We just need to have a better approach with runners in scoring position and less than two outs. As a team we haven't produced in that type of situation." The game's key sequence, however, did not involve Penn's hitting but La Salle's baserunning. In the seventh, Explorers (11-14) catcher Kevin Wittmeyer stole second and third base on consecutive pitches. Minutes later, he capitalized on Penn's third error to score La Salle's fourth and final run. "When [Wittmeyer] reached second, the third basemen was real far back, and it was the pitch after the first stolen base, so I didn't think they were ready for us then," said La Salle coach Larry Conti, whose runners stole six bases in the two games. In the last of the ninth, down by one, the Quakers were the beneficiaries of a walk and two hit batsmen; suddenly Penn found itself needing just a single for a win. But a sharp ground ball to second by Jeremy McDowell, who had pinch ran and scored in the eighth, ended the comeback. From the outset yesterday, though, it looked good for the Quakers. Penn junior Jeff Gregorio hit a bomb -- his fifth of the year -- to left in the first and added an RBI triple in the second for good measure. Two pitches after his second hit, Gregorio was driven in by a Jim Mullen single. "Penn looked good early," Conti said. "My first pitcher was making himself some trouble but they were making him pay -- especially that big kid [Gregorio]. He got two hanging curveballs and he knew what to do with them." Unfortunately for the Quakers, their bats went to sleep at the same time the sky began falling for their defense. Errors in the second and fifth did not hurt Penn, as La Salle stranded 17 runners. Miscues in the third and sixth, though, gave the Explorers runs -- going into the seventh Penn was clinging to a 4-3 lead. And then, the proverbial "stuff" hit the fan. Without a hit or even a ball leaving the infield, the Explorers scored three times -- largely due to three Penn errors -- in the seventh to take a 6-4 lead. More Penn errors in the eighth and ninth helped La Salle bring eight additional men across the plate, putting the game our of reach. So, despite four hits by Mullen -- whom Conti said he "would gladly trade for" -- and two apiece from Gregorio, Ron Rolph and Shawn Spiezio, Penn fell 14-5. The culprit? Ten Quakers errors -- all made in the infield. Of La Salle's 14 runs, only three were earned. Strong outings by Penn hurlers Matt Hepler and Dan Fitzgerald were wasted in the midst of a flurry of miscues. Also lost in these defeats was the return of an injured Penn player. Spiezio, who separated his shoulder in the first game of '99, finally returned to the lineup Tuesday -- going 2-for-6 with two errors over two days. "It felt good for me to be back? but things just didn't go our way," Spiezio said. "We're playing hard but we need to work on some things and hopefully things will pick up this weekend." In addition, Ambrosius was hit by a pitch on the right hand in the ninth inning on Tuesday and sat out yesterday. The Quakers obviously missed their captain, but with the senior expected back for this weekend's Ivy doubleheaders, the team will hopefully find a way to refocus and recoup.

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